Rick Lee...I started jamming Van Halen again.

[bigchillcar]

hey rick, i remember that you really liked evh, too..and actually after reading some of your posts about it, i decided last april to get my old charvel out of storage and start playing again after an 18 year break. it's been a crappy year, but learning how to play all over again has been therapeutic. my brother also convinced me to do it..he's a drummer and wanted us to jam together. and we saw van halen live a couple months before i got it out and that was it!

anyway, are you still playing? we made a whole bunch of videos on his camcorder and uploaded them here to youtube under my same pelican name. half of it's ear and half is relearning from internet tabs. man, wouldn't those have been worth their weight in gold back in the 80's??! wow..

http://www.youtube.com/user/bigchillcar

later,
ryan

[slodave]

Crunching some video right now, but will watch your vid in a bit. Good for you!

[ted]

Enjoyed your Van Halen!

Alex vh has entered an occasional PCA TT at SOW (local track just north of LA).
After he barely let me pass I went looking for his black Ferrari.
As I approached him I said "do you play the drums?"
He answered "only when I'm working".
Very cool guy, said he'd like to trade the f car in for a black GT3 RSR.

[bigchillcar]

big al...neat story, ted!

[Oh Haha]

You know, AVH seems like such a nice guy. His talent is obvious but I think his humility is more impressive.

[lowyder993s]

God, I wish I could play guitar like that...everyone makes it seem so effortless. I SUCK!!! good to have you back.

[Nostril Cheese]

I should post a video of my old band ripping through Mean Streets

[VINMAN]

Ryan those vids are great! I havent touched my guitar in yrs. Always get the itch to blow the dust off it!

[Rick Lee]

Very cool. I love the Full Bug, truly an underrated great It demonstrates to a tee how great a rhythm player EVH is by taking such a simple riff and making it so cool just by phrasing and accents.

I have only been playing my nylon string Gibson acoustic for the last few mos. I need to crank up my amps and dust off my Ernie Ball EVH model. It's sad that the longer I stay away from it, the more afraid I am to pick it back up because I don't want to hear how bad I suck now.

I saw the Atomic Punks play here again recently. Gawd, they crushed everything. Just amazing. I really felt schooled and even learned a few things I had always been playing wrong.

So does anyone have any dirt on Eddie's recent wedding? I'm dying to know if Dave was invited. I hear Ed just had some surgery on his hand and ain't gonna be touring soon.

[Rick Lee]

What's the cheapest camera I can get away with for posting similar videos on Youtube? I've been meaning to do this for a while. I'd like to make some videos of myself playing VH, Eric Johnson and Steve Howe stuff.

BTW, I still think the all time toughest guitar solo out there is White Lion's Little Fighter. No one on Youtube can nail it. A few come close. Amazing how many kids out there can totally nail anything by Yngwie, but still no one can get Little Fighter just right.

[bigchillcar]

hey guys, thanks for the welcome back and the nice comments. the first couple of months last year, i was literally sitting down at home re-learning how to do even basic chords, much less rhythm and lead work. it was weird..after 18 years it was sorta like the 'muscle memory' thing..re-learning in days or weeks what had taken me months or years first time around. seeing tabs for the first time was huge..wouldn't have gotten back this far without them, just saves a lot of time i used to spend slowing down record albums, learning by ear..sometimes i'd still prefer that for subtle phrasing.

rick..i know of the atomic punks from youtube only, and you're right on..they slay the stuff. there are a few guys i subscribe to as well who are just 'armchair players', but phenomenal..look thru mine and find someone like 'satchbooogy' if i spelled it the way he does..super nice guy to write back and forth with and he kills vh stuff..and all kinds of others that i'm not even familiar with.

'full bug' is definitely one of my faves..and it's so true about his rhythm. when i was young, i focused on his lead playing..this time around, honestly i'm rediscovering rhythm..and how little attention i used to afford it or accentuate it..his songwriting skills are wayyy underrated. i would tell you my all-fave has to be 'i'm the one' though..there are so many damn riffs in it..hu throws in just every technique he used to do at that time, plus the boogie woogie rhythm is par excellance..i've always gotta crank the piss outa that one on the stereo. most of what i posted here is just raw footage of me learning the stuff on cam..much is incomplete and i'm fumbling thru the parts i haven't taken the time to learn. my 'full bug' intro is much improved, but i still have trouble quickly jumping from the first to the second part of the solo with the two-handed run across the strings smoothly. but whadaya expect??! this is ed's *****!!

man, i know very little about cams..i only know we use a little panasonic and it's just using it's internal mic, which doesn't help the sound quality..lol. i'm sure we could set up the audio recording part better in some way. maybe someone will chime in how to help you with that. we're just playing around with no intentions of doing anymore than playing for ourselves and our friends. i hope you do upload some video..would be cool to share videos with you, too..some of these people really inspire you..and some make you wanna toss away your guitar!

[Rick Lee]

I also focused mostly on Eddie's solos when I was growing up. But once in a while I'd see someone play a VH tune in a music store or see Eddie play it live (had front row on the Balance tour) and then I'd run home to relearn the song I used to think I was playing right. So many of his chords and melodies have so much genius to them and get overlooked because of his solos. Honestly, I think I could nail just about any of his solos if I went back and relearned them. But I still cannot get all the cool rhythm stuff down from Fair Warning. Listen hard to Sinner's Swing, Dirty Movies, Hear About It Later and especially the bridges in Unchained. Pure genius rhythm playing. That album could be years worth of lessons. I got it when I was in grade school and stil pick out new stuff every time I listen to it.

I gotta get a camera rigged up and then brush up on some VH tunes. I have a Boss GT-3 running through a Fender Hot Rod DeVille and can get just about any sound from it. I have a 5150 setting and another for a Marshall Plexi. But my 22 yr. old Gallien Krueger 250ML (solid state) still gets closer to the olf VH sound than anything else I've heard. I remember my dad yelling at me for spending the money on that when I was 16. But to this day it's still been the best $325 I ever spent.

[bigchillcar]

wow, yeah i'd love that gk amp as well. i only had the charvel model 1 remaining, but i've added a new seymour duncan custom custom (reportedly an ed copy of sorts), added a floyd that this guitar never had, bought a line6 bogner spider valve tube amp and a digitech rp500 modeler pedal to hellp bring me back into the modern era of gear. i'd list all my old **** i have, but you'd know it all anyway.

the bridge on 'unchained'..yep, the only part i can't quite work out yet..a cpl of the guys i subscribe to have it down, but i've set that one aside for the time being (do you hear a challenge there? haha). there's a guy on there 'craigman65' who a bunch of consider a better 'fair warning' player..check him out. of course the intro to 'mean streets' is a beast, but i also dig the solo on 'so this is love'. 'girl gone bad' is sweet and beyond my skills..i'm not a great harmonic tapper. honestly, about all i play is roth-era...i try a cpl hagar-era. i like a lot of the hagar stuff, it's just that you could spend years working on nothing but those first six albums! i'm ashamed to say i'm not very famiiar and don't know how to play anythign north of hagar..i need to explore it sometime. but after 18 years, it's gonna take a while to work that damn far up the ladder, you know?

[ramonesfreak]

wow after an 18 year break your playing is fantastic. all the little nuances are there with natural movement. being a player, i know how fast the muscle memory and feel disappear even after a few weeks of not playing alot. good job

i love EVH. those early records i still put on, on vinyl and they sound great. he has a wonderful approach to using effects...very sparingly that give the song just what it needs to make it different from the rest

[Rick Lee]

Oh, 1984 is another much overlooked one because of its commercial success. Girl Gone Bad, House of Pain and Top Jimmy are just amazing. I don't find the harmonic tapping stuff difficult at all. I have the intro to Mean Street down pretty well. But man, the solo in that song and especially the intro to the solo are very tough. The Atomic Punks did that last time I saw them and Lance so crushed it. I have to learn the intro to that solo. Soooo cool. WTF was Ed thinking when he came up with that one?

I got the Live Without a Net VHS when I was 15 and I spent much of the next summer sitting in front of the tv with my GK and Kramer Focus 5000, learning every single note of that concert solo. That's how I really figured out Cathedral and the intro to Mean Street, though I like the album version of Catherdral much better.

Last night I was playing Spanish Fly on my nylon string and had forgotten how much of a stretch the end of that one is. HTF did he come up with that and then get so much sounded out of a nylon string? His wrists have to be made titanium to do that stuff. I feel arthritic when I do it.

[Rick Lee]

Yes, Ed also uses effects more tastefully than anyone else. They're really obvious and upfront in songs like Atomic Punk or Hear About it Later or Unchained. But he also used them very subtly in solos just to give it a little more ooomph. Listen closely to the solos in Ice Cream Man, On Fire and You Really Got Me. Great slow phase in all of them. When F.U.C.K. came out, I think he used a wah-wah pedal in every song on that one.

[slodave]

Cool stuff, Ryan!

[bigchillcar]

Originally Posted by srandallf

wow after an 18 year break your playing is fantastic. all the little nuances are there with natural movement. being a player, i know how fast the muscle memory and feel disappear even after a few weeks of not playing alot. good job

thanks for the props..yeah, i can't say enough about how weird it felt to hot strings again after that many years! in some ways i'm stronger now, maybe have more endurance for playing that is, but i can't play legato as fast, which i find very frustrating. i was never a speed-metal player, so i don't tend to go into that area..what is it called? string-skipping arpeggios or something like that? looks and sounds cool, but my fingers aren't ready to get too far into that. at some point i gotta just stop learning licks and just settle into my own thing.

[bigchillcar]

Originally Posted by Rick Lee

I got the Live Without a Net VHS when I was 15 and I spent much of the next summer sitting in front of the tv with my GK and Kramer Focus 5000, learning every single note of that concert solo. That's how I really figured out Cathedral and the intro to Mean Street, though I like the album version of Catherdral much better.

Last night I was playing Spanish Fly on my nylon string and had forgotten how much of a stretch the end of that one is. HTF did he come up with that and then get so much sounded out of a nylon string? His wrists have to be made titanium to do that stuff. I feel arthritic when I do it.

i ought to get that video..i never have another guitarist to jam with who plays anything other than acoustic strumming. yeah, love ed's acoustic numbers, too..'take your whiskey home'..love the ***** out of that intro..i got most of it down, but the coolest sounding licks in it..guess i'm still fakin' i learned cathedral late last year, but quit after my v olume pot finally said 'no more' and froze, so i tend to stay away from it now..lol. i have fairly long fingers, but yeah the ending tap series in 'spanish fly' is a bear..and the legato licks in the beginning before the tapping takes over? i often wonder about that..i mean, that guitar's friggin' angry! must have had the mic sitting right on the neck with mucho gain..surely nobody's fingers have that much attack..on nylon.

[Rick Lee]

Take Your Whiskey Home is an amazing intro. So much feel to that one. No way to write it out correctly. You just have to have it in you.